OSLO FIRE STATION

Location: Oslo (NO)

Landscape Design

AOUMM – Argot ou La Maison Mobile

Architecture 

SPACEGROUP 

Design Team

Luca Astorri
Riccardo Maria Balzarotti
Rossella Locatelli
Matteo Umberto Poli
Micaela Ortega

The Oslo municipality organized a competition for a new fire station in Bjørvika, opening new possibilities for the public facility and for the neighborhood as a place; Aoumm and Spacegroup teamed up to develop a proposal. The new plot lifts the fire station in the light, to a new visibility and possible encounter with the audience it is meant to serve. The square in front of the building is designed to be a pleasant public space and, at the same time, to cope with the requirements of emergency vehicles. The building meets the two “parallel lives” of a fire station: logistics, service and efficiency and the iconic dimension, where children and adults will always be fascinated by fire trucks and heroism. Transparency, openness, porosity and lightness characterize the project in expression and materiality. Instead of a massive box, the station is a building divided into two: an airy hall with two high floors and a solid wood structure in 3 floors – gathered under a structural steel frame. The station’s functions are divided into the typologies; “The machine”, “The Patio Villa” and “The Hall of Heroes”. The exposed structural framework binds them together. The structure marks the distinction between the fire station’s activities and the park’s audience-oriented program outside.